Hey guys, what are your thoughts on the existence of extraterrestrial life and the potential involvement of governments in concealing or studying such entities.
Hey guys, what are your thoughts on the existence of extraterrestrial life and the potential involvement of governments in concealing or studying such entities.
Jeremy England proposed a while back that life is just an expression of entropy increase. Interestingly, if this could be verified (I don’t think it can) it would point to life being universally abundant.
That we’re not special is one of the
foundingfoundational principles of astrophysics, the Copernican Principle. It goes that we aren’t special, we don’t have a privileged viewpoint, and therefore the universe should look the same in every direction. It does get applied in other fields of science in one form or another, since it’s more a way of thinking than a theory as such. Again, it’s not falsifiable but it does seem reasonable.Interesting, but i have to disagree with “and therefore the universe should look the same in every direction.”
Everywhere we look, we see asymmetry and variegation, along with instances of homogeneity and monoculture, as one thing wins out in a small domain.
So, yes, in some sense, same in all directions, but that “sameness” sure has a heck of a lot of play. And not being special, per se, doesn’t mean lack of uniqueness. Even cloned plants on the same shelf have differing viewpoints, though perhaps not “privileged”, unless one happens to be closer to a sunny window. But that happens.
I’ve also thought about life being an expression of entropy increase, but I can’t say I fully agree. There are aspects of that at play - somewhat more noticeable in thought and consciousness, and the efficiency of organizing thought - but I think that an assumption of universal entropy is just another local-phenomena-first issue. Although it applies in systems we isolate from the universe as a whole, the broad tendency for substance clumps (i.e., organization) and variegation is also universal.
I suppose that’s fair, since “looks the same in every direction” is a bit of an oversimplification. The principle is an assumption, rather, that we are not privileged observers, and therefore the universe should look the same in every direction. It then follows that we should be very interested to understand why when it doesn’t.
I can’t agree with you that the assumption of universal entropy increase is at all unreasonable. The laws of thermodynamics appear to hold everywhere, therefore entropy must be increasing everywhere. England’s extrapolation to presume that life is an expression of this law might be tenuous, but the law is pretty much ironclad. That’s not to say that structure can’t arise; it clearly can because: hello. But the tendency of the universe as a closed system with a one directional arrow of time is heat death. That’s just a result of thermodynamics. Eventually.
What caused the initial imbalance, and what prevents it from happening again?
Nothing. It’s happening, and has always been. Anything that claims the universe as a whole is deteriorating is absolute bollocks, as it requires a creation myth, just as it postulates destruction.
If the universe is anything that we currently have theories for, the universe is a strange loop.
Now you’re talking about some of the biggest unsolved problems in physics :)
I don’t know if it necessitates a creation myth, though. The big bang theory doesn’t imply a creator, but also doesn’t require a steady state.
What’s this about a strange loop? I don’t know if I’ve heard of this before.
I meant a strange attractor, but I think it also has
prostitutesproperties of a strange loop.A strange loop is a hierarchy, or heterarchy, where as you proceed ‘up’ the hierarchy, you eventually arrive where you started.
A strange attractor is a system which, although never quite having the exact same state, cycles around the same general set of states. One way of thinking of this is “a loop which never quite mets up with itself”. An interesting example of this would be a three+ body gravitational system where the bodies are of comparable mass, and no stabilizing elements are present. Odds are very against them actually striking each other, but orbits are virtually completely unpredictable. Nevertheless, they won’t eject any of the bodies, so they will always be in the same general region.
As applied to the universe, you could set the ‘laws’ of the universe as values on a manifold, and these ‘laws’ would flex and shift as the overall state of the universe changes, but the universe would cycle around within a probability niche - a strange attractor. There’s also a potential it could leave that probability niche and ‘fall’ into, or enter into, another. One such probability niche would be the very strong tendencies of the universe - the ‘laws’ of the universe - as we know them.
My training is in applied mathematics, so I’m only conceptually aware of strange attractors. It’s my understanding that they are chaotic systems that tend towards a stable state. As such I’m a little skeptical of the claim that the universe itself is a strange attractor, since it is broadly predictable and hence not chaotic, and it’s expanding and thus not tending towards stability!
I’m referring to the laws of the universe, which have not always been consistent. A strange attractor can form states that are temporarily dynamically stable - and for something like the universe, we may not notice any small changes to ‘constants,’ as we are directly subject to them (including our tools of measurement). Aside from that, change is likely so slow that we may not even notice it.
Nevertheless, if the big bang is in any form to be believes, we must accept that the universe’s basic laws can change, and yet they enter states where they do not noticeably change. If the pattern of the rest of nature holds (massive numbers of similar forms and structures distributed over time and space, where rough repetition along a common theme is a common theme), the universe will probably do similarly.
What would be incredibly odd would be:
Or
Either of those seem unlikely. But, of course, I live in this universe, so I could be biased. :-)